Britain: One Nation?

Our poll figures are usually reported giving percentages of the whole British adult population who hold a particular opinion, but it is sometimes instructive to break them down geographically and consider to what extent national opinion is simply an aggregation of different regional opinions.

In most respects the similarities in attitudes between Britain's regions are far more striking than the differences. Although there are, of course, long-standing distinctions in political party strength, most of these are related to the most obvious socio-demographic differences between different areas of the country and, furthermore, changes in attitudes have tended to be more uniform than not across the country.

Similarly, when one looks at attitudes to political issues in a broad sense, regional differences are muted and, where they exist, the reasons are for the most part obvious. MORI's monthly question in which respondents are asked to name (without being shown a list of options or any other prompting) the "most important issues facing Britain today", should be a sensitive barometer for detecting any distinctive regional characteristics, yet the general pattern of answers is remarkably similar across the country, as the table (drawing on the combined responses from the five monthly surveys following the 2001 election) shows. There is no obvious and dramatic "north-south divide" or any other broad pattern.